Chills

It seems perfectly germane to a discussion where people talk about creating a new app (especially one that has to integrate with existing software on three different OS) as though it was a couple of hour's work!
On the other hand, if all you want is a simple image viewer, why are people so keen on Affinity creating their own, when there are already other ones available (such as XnView MP)? 

No, It isn't a fairly trivial task. 

It might seem simple to knock up a simple spec, but the devil is in the detail.  And that gets time-consuming and expensive.

Then maybe that afternoon they could create a new PDF editing app, maybe a video editor as well, if they do a couple of hours overtime!

No, It isn't a fairly trivial task. 

It might seem simple to knock up a simple spec, but the devil is in the detail.  And that gets time-consuming and expensive.

Paper, scissors and a bit of glue – how long could have it taken???
 

I have both Adobe Photoshop and Affinity Photo, in fact I started on PS decades ago. I find for what I do Affinity Photo is fine. 
I also prefer Publisher to InDesign.  
There is nothing embarrassing about the Affinity tools.

And that is exactly what is needed in A. Publisher.  
 
When I select fonts for a specific project, I mark them as Favourites, and they appear in the Favourite Subset.
Though, it would help if you could have multiple groups of Favourites.(with the ability to have the same font in more than one group.)
Also you can have Character styles which includes the font.  That is another way of sub setting them.

No.

People aren't afraid to use AI, they have ethical qualms and are smart enough to see the way AI will be used to replace their jobs -- if we let it happen

What a bizarre comparison. Y2K and AI. They are not even remotely related. Again not sure why you can't seem to grasp the idea that if there was generative AI in Affinity you would not have to use it. You don't have to use it in Photoshop, no gun to your head. You Simply go about as normal without it. Your way is so backwards it is not even funny. Like let's make a car and keep the radio separate so those who don't want the distraction of music or news while they drive don't have it. Those who want it can hook up the radio to a trailer and connect to the car and play through loud speakers so you can hear it while driving. The whole premise, like pretty much all of your threads and posts are nonsensical. You want a company to promise to never use AI in their software but then want them to make a stand alone AI that only uses their artists as references. So you want limited AI that is a pain to use because actual pro uses are not using AI to create pictures from scratch, they are using it primarily to fix and adjust images easily. So now with your stand alone AI app you just have a really limited picture creator. If I wanted to just make a picture with AI why would I use Affinity? There are countless others out there without restrictions and completely open to give much better results. 

I've never heard anyone say that. Sounds like a strawman

The biggest concern that many have is that there are legal issues with some usages of generative AI, such that some companies and clients forbid using it in the artwork being provided to them.
Consider that the "generative AI" is fed a bunch of existing images (stuff not created by AI) and it "learns" from those images and basically copies parts of them to produce the "new" work - meaning the new work is technically a composition of small parts of other works.
Based on that, if the original works were copyrighted, then you are now potentially in violation of copyright laws if permission was not obtained to use them.  If the copied parts of the images are trademarks (someone asked for a mouse and got Micky Mouse, for example), then you may be using someone's trademark without their consent.  If someone takes the work and tries to pass it off as the creation of the AI (or their own work), then you are largely ignoring that it is a derivative of the work of possibly many others, and denying them credit for what they did.
In some cases permission was not obtained to make use of the images that were fed into the AIs and thus copyright is a very real concern for many.  Even if permission was obtained from those who took the pictures, if any trademarks are involved, or if the images were photos which included people and model releases were not obtained which cover the arbitrary use of generative AI, you could wind up with a different set of legal issues.
Consequently there are many who ban its use, and people who work for clients are looking for options that help them to convince the clients that they are not using it, as some clients will not allow it due to those legal concerns.

I trust the fam will spank you for taking time away from the vaycay to look at your phone!

I'm on holiday in the Mediterranean so the only thing I can throw is some shade and shapes in the club 
 

I did just that and the problem has already been solved... (and the solution has nothing to do with Affinity!)  see 
 
 

Hi @Chills,
This has come up previously, we don't create embedded thumbnails for PDF documents, just native affinity files. We rely on the OS having built in support to preview that file type. This would be a feature request.
On a personal note I tend to use Acrobat as my default file associations for opening PDFs for proofing etc. and right click > open with when I want to open the PDF in affinity. You can enable PDF previews in their settings.

That would be a different issue, so you should create your own topic in the Bugs forum to get it addressed, I think.

This would be a valid argument and a helpful suggestion, except self-checking barcode fonts currently don't work because of a bug in Affinity.
So you can't just select the font and type in a number. Some surprisingly complicated pre-processing is needed for most barcode types (eg UPC/EAN).
 

Thanks, but I have been doing layout and book/magazine/newspaper design since the 1980s. What I was hoping for were actual templates I could tweak rather than advice on how to create one from scratch. But I will read his page and see what I can use of it.

I suspect he may have meant it when he said it but...   Things have probably been moving and changing a lot.  So any Q&A on a moving target would have been pointless. 
Added to which, having seen this sort of thing before, whilst Ash might have wanted to do it, and as Serif would have done it, Canva PR-Media team will have got involved and wanted to micromanage.  They move slower and with the changes mentioned above what Ash envisaged and where Canva PR were heading the lot ended up in the long grass.   There will be a Q&A but you can bet it will be a safe corporate one in months time not weeks.
 

This is a big problem for residents there; I work with folks on decommissioning issues, and we are all concerned that there are plans to keep old, embrittled reactors open for decades after end of design life.  Residents have good reason not to trust the NRC; I recommend watching the film Radioactive: The Women of Three Mile Island (https://radioactivethefilm.com).
The investor community is salivating over new small modular reactors, even though the only company that had a model approved, NuScale Power, had most of its potential customers drop out because of delays and cost (https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nuscale-power-uamps-agree-terminate-nuclear-project-2023-11-08/). 

@lacerto I've just uploaded a book to Blurb and they make indeed a preflight check after uploading, checking the files for technical errors. Additionally they create a preview pdf, where you once more have the chance to check your book, especially to make sure that all content is within the printable areas.
So the warning you where referring to, is about the content (text, pictures, layout) only. They do of course no spell checking, or look for an ugly layout or poor picture quality.

Yes, but this applies also when you use their plugin, as you can read here:
https://support.blurb.com/hc/en-us/articles/214844043-Preview-your-PDF-before-upload
And yes, they do a preflight as this page for error handling shows:
https://support.blurb.com/hc/en-us/articles/207792976-PDF-uploader-preflight-errors
I would also like to see something like the Blurb plugin for Adobe Indesign, but only because it simplifies your workflow.
Currently I use their calculation page and this works like a charm:
https://www.blurb.com/make/pdf_to_book/booksize_calculator
 
 

I'd be quite happy if the growing list of "known issues" (bugs) that we are continually being told have been "passed to the developers" were actually dealt with and fixed! (Especially the "silly" ones, like missing icons, incorrect labels/translations, UI problems and the like.)

Some of the reason for the pause in information is a change I made to the @Affinity Info Bot posts which used to tell users that a bug had been fixed and {is/would be} available in a beta available {already/very soon}. However I decided that going forward the bot would only post here once a beta build is actually available. So without starting a 2.6.0 beta, the regular nudge nudge of coming fixes has been silent. Sorry but I felt this change was necessary, as I knew that it would be a long time to tease users that their particular issue was theoretically fixed, but without a 2.6.0 beta to download that same fix was not available to try. I thought that would be incredibly frustrating and cause a lot of users to demand a 2.6 beta started before it was ready. Until now 2.6 has not been ready, and we're still a little way off.
So let me explain why there has been this extended period with no significant new beta..... We recognised that, by introducing multi-page spreads in 2.6 (so more than 2 pages per spread), we were making a significant change that would require a long internal testing period. The rearchitecture of spreads is nearly complete. As soon as we're ready with this and the other new features, we will announce the 2.6 beta in the beta forums and a flurry of over 200 bug fixes will be announced by the Affinity Info Bot.
The changes and improvements in 2.6 will, as Walt says, only be public once the beta starts. The multi-page change is unusual in that it has been discussed early.